


Stand by me

by emotionalsupporthufflepuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, But me so I wrote it, F/M, Short One Shot, Smoking, Swearing, Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, the story no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 10:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotionalsupporthufflepuff/pseuds/emotionalsupporthufflepuff
Summary: The moments when Draco and Astoria knew they were something more.





	Stand by me

**Author's Note:**

> Hi yes me again. I started with the one-word name thing and I just couldn't come up with one this time. Also, I highly recommend listening to :  
> "Stand by me" covered by Florence and The Machine while reading this if you can.  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/5XSU59wtE5CRCAEyHmmGy4

This wasn't supposed to happen like this-

Things were never supposed to go this far-

Hell, they weren’t even “together” for the longest time.

But there she is, sliding a key to there house onto the loop with the rest of her keys and key chains jingling and clanging together, silent as she focuses on her task, deep in contemplation otherwise. The rays of sun coming through the car window in the dying afternoon reflect off her hair, bringing up deep red undertones and her skin glows in a light honey color as if it cannot reflect off her person enough. He stares for a minute longer than is strictly necessary at the stop sign to watch her unaware, letting the steering wheel slip in his grasp as he turns the corner and bites the inside of his lip so he doesn’t ruin the moment.

They pull up to the small 2 bedroom bungalow that their parents hate and they love. It’s still in the city so it certainly came with a price tag they approved of but like his mother said after a long sip of her mimosa a brunch “ quaint.” As in, it wasn’t on a McMansion farm with security, 3 gates a country club, golf course, stables and whatever other trappings they decided they needed to get by. Besides, this was closer to the hospital anyway.

Some things had just become more important...

He parks and she turns to him, smiling from ear to ear, her eyes shimmering even behind sunglasses and she was breathtaking without even trying to be, flawless without any effort. He grins back feeling like an idiot and a nagging tingle of paranoia that any moment he was going to wake up and be back in his parents' house alone in his bed and this would all have been apart of some terrible convoluted fever dream.

She must have sensed this as she always, as she always read him like his thoughts were displayed on a screen on his forehead. “Draco, what’s wrong?” her hand wrapped in his, the medication made them tremble ever so slightly and made them feel cooler than normal.

His brain stutter stops like a bad transmission. " You're...I... " He says his heart catching in his lungs. " I love you Astoria."

_Oh good, you said it in the car, stuttering like an idiot. Good job Malfoy you fucking…_

" I love you too." She placed a chaste kiss on his mouth which he was too stunned to move. "Come on, let's go inside ."

The first time he kissed her, she tasted like something bright and bubbly and vaguely fruity. Something that rose up, popped and bit and tickled his brain and instantly craved more, like the most expensive champagne, but even better….

It happened every time after.

He follows her into their house that's still empty save for a mattress on the floor in the master bedroom and his things he moved earlier from his parents home. She's talking animatedly her hands moving as fast her mouth and he’s trying to listen but she just says so much and he’s transfixed on her mouth and her eyes that the words are getting lost in the space between them either.

And it's not just a sex thing and an _everything_ thing. She needs him, not his name to social climb or his money for material things or his past to boost her own ego. He needs her to keep her grounded, to keep her calm, to wake up with her, to hold her hand when reality threatens to crush her spirit.

The moment he knew this was something different comes unbidden. She didn’t want to go home from the doctors' office, she didn’t want to go see her parents or her sister, she just sat in the passenger seat of his car, chainsmoking while tears trickled down her face.

“ I have an idea. “ he said, crushing a Monster can between his hands to vent some frustration.

“What?”

“Just trust me, Greengrass.”

He drove for hours, mostly from memory, out to a beach along the coast to a tourist trap of a town and boardwalk that hung far over the ocean. He knows his mother took him out her once after he broke his leg playing soccer, or climbing a tree or something and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing it or why he chose here because he’s really not good at this type of thing.

But shes stopped crying and smoking so it must be working.

She leads them to the end of the boardwalk where the sun is setting and the lights of sight-seeing Ferris wheel and the game booths are just starting to glow and the people are burnt and sandy but happy, rolling along slowly. They sit on a terribly uncomfortable wooden bench and he fights the urge to complain because shes content and lost in thought watching the sunset and that's enough to keep sitting here.

X-X

 

She says they met at Pansy Parkinson's college graduation party when his reflexes saved her from falling into the pool after a drunk frat boy swung at some loud mouthy redhead from an opposing frat. Her thanks to him was " Has anyone ever told you, you look like a ferret?" He just jerked his hand away and turned on his heel away from her and disappeared into the crowd for another hour. But she found him later and said that she thinks ferrets are adorable and he should put his number in her phone as " ferret face" so she'd remember him…

Ok, it wasn't her smoothest moment but she was well and truly inebriated and distracted by his fingers drumming on the edge of her knee…

If you ask him, he'll say they met a few weeks earlier than that at Astoria's 21st birthday party and Draco had approached her but she was in the middle of a rant about the patriarchy and its elaborate web of conspiracy against women and it was actually sort of frightening how she spoke with such passion he had never seen in a person, so he backed away slowly into the shadows talking himself out of it.

 

X-X

 

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, she thought falling backward on to the mattress to get a better view to watch him from.

She was never the “lucky” girl, she was only the awkward little sister of the pageant princess, too loud too, to outspoken, too opinionated to be considered dating material in their inner circle. She had far too many thoughts that escaped through her mouth and the other boys had always just looked at her like a slug had crawled out from the corner of her mouth.

When she turns her head to watch him do his post-shower preening, with only a towel wrapped low around his hips, she remembers that it hadn’t started out about minds anyway. But everything had changed and somehow nothing had in the same instance because she had first kissed him she knew he was hers to keep. It was something hard and chemical with the slightest sweet aftertaste, she could practically feel the synapses in her brain lighting up with different colors her fingers and toes tingled and suddenly she loved everyone and everything all at once. He was like a drug and she was chemically dependent.

A chill crept in from nowhere and settled into her bones and she pulled the comforter over her up to her nose still watching him, now combing his silvery hair deep in his own thoughts.

Without looking away from the mirror, he shakes her blue plastic pill container and she scowls - _not that deep apparently. Fuck._

“I’m comfortable,” she whines and he just frowns the corners of his mouth pointing sharply down and his eyes narrowing. He shakes it again and she gets up, huffing, pouting, stomping, like a petulant child. She knows she needs to take them but they make her feel so awful and tired and she sleeps right through there life together.

“Happy?” she askes, crumpling up the wet paper Dixie cup and throwing it in the trash. He hums his contentment and kisses her on the temple. “ I know, the side effects, it’s a lot. But I need you to fight this. You remember what the neurologist said about your options, medication is the way to go.” she interrupts his daily speech with a deep kiss, wrapping her hands around the back of his head, eager to get her fix of him. He pulls away but touches his forehead to hers, stroking her cheek with one hand. She looks away and whispers “ I need you a lot more than you need me.”

When she closes her eyes again she was back on the boardwalk and the sun had set and she could smell the salty sea air. That was the moment she knew this was something more. And like something out of a 80’s romantic comedy Stand by me started playing from a wedding reception on the beach below but it was the worst cover ever possibly composed by human ears and even as much as she was drowning in her own grief and overcome by her own circumstances she could help but start to laugh. Wholeheartedly, on the edge of maniacally, gasping in between laughs.

“You’re losing it, Tori.” He wasn’t laughing but he was smiling at her hysteria and he didn’t try and stop her from feeling everything but he was just there, there to catch if she fell off this precipice that was threating to consume her and it was all so funny.

“You ok?” he asked wrapping his hand in hers.

“ Yeah, I will be.” She had kissed him as she kissed him in the present. She kissed him for all the things that were and that would ever be.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you like that? I have a lot more of this universe in my brain and in my docs if there's an interest for it. Thank you for reading either way.
> 
> Also follow me on tumblr with the same name: emotionalsupporthufflepuff


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